Recently, the bright red tuna crabs — known as pelagic red crab or pleuroncodes planipes — were spotted on the beach at Lovers Point in Pacific Grove and further out in the bay where gulls have been seen feeding off them.

UC Davis professor of evolution and ecology Eric Sanford says the 18 pelagic red crabs are the first ones reported this far north since 1985, when there was an isolated sighting recorded in Fort Bragg.

These learnings are now driving the development of new experiments for the next trip, such as trying to quantify the shockwaves close to the vent to understand the tolerance of the pelagic fish and sharks that are living around this volcano.

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Did You Know?

Pelagic comes to us from Greek, via Latin. The Greek word pelagikos became "pelagicus" in Latin and then "pelagic" in English. ("Pelagikos" is derived from "pelagos," the Greek word for "sea," plus the adjectival suffix -ikos.) "Pelagic" first showed up in dictionaries in 1656; a definition from that time says that Pelagick meant "of the Sea, or that liveth in the Sea." A full 350 years later, writers are still using "pelagic" with the same meaning, albeit less frequently than its more familiar synonym "oceanic."

Origin and Etymology of pelagic

Latin pelagicus, from Greek pelagikos, from pelagos sea — more at plagal